Creative Nonfiction Essays

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Great playwright and filmmaker, DAVID MAMET, just wrote an incredible new book, The Disenlightenment, Politics, Horror, and Entertainment. David is a special man and talent. Get his book, NOW!" — President Donald Trump One of America's greatest living...

The definitive oral history of the iconic and beloved TV show The Wire, as told by the actors, writers, directors, and others involved in its creation. Since its final episode aired in 2008, HBO's acclaimed crime drama The Wire has only become more popular and influential. The issues it tackled...

*Updated edition includes bonus chapter* Winner of the 2017 Audie Award for Humor "A truth-riot of a book!"—Shonda Rhimes New York Times Bestseller #1 Washington Post Bestseller Redbook “20 Books By Women You Must Read this Fall” GoodHousekeeping.com “17 New Best New Books to Read This...

“Has the page-turning quality of a thriller.” —NPR “Strange and wonderful…A book for our times.” —The New York Times Book Review “Propulsive…mesmerizing…breathtaking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) This unforgettable memoir traces the ramifications of a series of...

"Eliza Foss performs this powerful audiobook in a mature-sounding voice she modulates with skill." —AudioFile on The Listening Path (an Earphones Award winner) Experience the essential Artist’s Way philosophy in this practical, accessible collection of tools from “the Queen of Change”...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” From the renowned novelist and critic, an exquisite collection of journal entries from the 1980s and ’90s, tracking a young, gay author’s literary coming-of-age in New York during the AIDS crisis In 1983, Thomas...

In her new collection of autobiographical essays, Nino Gugunishvili offers her reflections and meditations on grief and loss, on friendship and longing, on memory and aging, on writing, and not writing, told through her personal experiences, forming an intimate, confessional narrative.

A Guardian Best Book of 2021 A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In...

This program is read by the author Sloane Crosley returns to the form that made her a household name in really quite a lot of households: Essays! These small doses of wit and sass make for an exuberant, unforgettable audiobook. From the New York Times–bestselling author Sloane Crosley comes...

A 6-Week Artist’s Way Program Julia Cameron has been teaching the world about creativity since her seminal book, The Artist’s Way, first broke open the conversation around art. Now, in Write for Life, she turns to one of the subjects closest to her heart: the art and practice of writing...

By the bestselling author of Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll and Last Train the Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, this dazzling new book of profiles is a culmination of Peter Guralnick’s remarkable work, which from the start has encompassed the full sweep of blues...

STORYCRAFT BLUEPRINT is a practical guide for writing true stories with the pull of a novel, without inventing facts or betraying the people in your life. It is written for the memoirist, the essayist, the journalist, the blogger, and the everyday writer who knows they have lived through something real, but struggles to shape it into a readable story. This book teaches you how to turn lived experience into narrative without lying. You will learn how to choose the right story, report and research responsibly, control the first page, build scenes and summaries that flow, develop a clean voice...

Beyond the Noise, Life is Waiting. We are bombarded daily by a "Mars" of media—global strife, political division, and celebrity scandals that feel lightyears away from the reality of our own streets. In Far From Mars, award-winning journalist Sal Nudo invites you to step out of the noise and into the quiet, extraordinary lives of the people right next door. These nine creative nonfiction stories prove that the most fascinating worlds aren’t found in outer space, but in the passions and resilience of our neighbors. Meet the people who make the twin cities pulse: The Couch Potatoes: A ...

One of Esquire's best books of spring 2022 An extended meditation on late style and last works from "one of our greatest living critics" (Kathryn Schulz, New York). When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating...

The essays in this collection are the work of a group of friends known as the Northwoods Essayists: The Write People. The name comes from a very special place where we first met each other, the Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Church in The Woodlands, Texas. The group began in 2020, and its membership has evolved over time. Our current members include Hallie Moore, Mira Dessy, Dorothy Kennedy, John Hammond, and Ann McAlpin. Our friend and fellow writer Sharon Ossowski passed away while this book was in progress. We know you’ll be delighted by her wonderful essays in this collection. Our ...

"Part memoir, part pep talk, the timely and inspirational guide for listeners and writers alike exudes Anders's colloquial and casual presence." - AudioFile Magazine This program is read by the author. From Charlie Jane Anders, the award-winning author of novels such as All the Birds in the Sky...

Truthful writing is rare, not because truth is unavailable, but because many writers choose performance. We exaggerate to sound wise. We polish until the voice disappears. We quote conversations we cannot truly reproduce. We turn people into villains or saints. We push pain into spectacle. Then we wonder why readers feel distance, doubt, or fatigue. Truth Written Well is a field guide for anyone who wants to write real life with integrity. It is built for memoir, creative nonfiction, personal essays, journalism-style storytelling, and civic education writing. The goal is simple: help you ...

In a book that begins with a series of lynchings and ends with a series of apologies, Eula Biss explores race in America. Her response to the topic is informed by the experiences chronicled in these essays - teaching in a Harlem school on the morning of 9/11, reporting for an African American newspaper in San Diego, watching the aftermath of Katrina from a college town in Iowa, and settling in Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood.

Over the course of a decade, these letters reflect on creative life, doubt, identity, and the slow maturing that comes with staying in the work. Written from the quiet of a writer’s desk, Letters from the Margins explores what it means to grow less certain and more attentive at the same time. The letters move through beginning and fatigue, discipline and ordinariness, ambition and loosening—without offering formulas or instruction. This is not a manual on writing. It is a sustained correspondence about living creatively over time. This book is part of a body of work exploring creative ...

Far From Mars: Brief Encounters and Lasting Echoes: A poignant and observant collection of creative nonfiction that explores the quiet corners of the Midwest and the loud complexities of the human heart. In this follow-up to Far From Mars, author and journalist Sal Nudo turns his lens toward the "sanctuaries" we build for ourselves—whether they are the solitude of a car in a brewery parking lot, the shared memories of a nursing home music room, or the fleeting connection of a grocery store checkout lane. From the high-stakes world of a scholar-boxer balancing racial battle fatigue with ...